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Hooding and award ceremony at Sheldon Hall.


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John Yoo, Still A War Criminal

Here's a great quote:

"Former government lawyer John Yoo taking credit on behalf of the Bush administration for Sunday's strike against Osama bin Laden is like Edward John Smith, the captain of the Titanic, taking credit for the results of the 1998 Academy Awards," - Andrew Cohen.

Not only do these war criminals and shoddy lawyers refuse to take accountability for their crimes, they tell clear untruths about how the capture of bin Laden was achieved and distort history.

So let us be very clear. The war criminal Dick Cheney presided over the worst lapse in national security since Pearl Harbor, resulting in the deaths of more than 3,000 people. This rank incompetent failed to get bin Laden at Tora Bora, and then dragged the US on false pretenses into a war in Iraq, empowering Iran's dictatorship, and killing another 5,000 more Americans on a wild goose chase. He presided over the deaths of more than 8,000 Americans, and tens of thousands of Iraqis during his criminally incompetent years in office.

On the other hand, the man who abolished torture as soon as he took office, Barack Obama, captured and killed Osama bin Laden, and captured a massive trove of intelligence, more than two years later. No Americans died in the operation.

What on earth are we debating? How have these delusional maniacs managed to even get us onto this turf? Because they have to. Because when the full truth of these past years are fully in focus, they will be revealed as some of the greatest criminals ever to have wielded power in America.

-Thanks to Andrew at The Daily Beast

Colbert and Planned Parenthood.

I was laughing so hard - and apparently Colbert couldn't help himself either.

Ex-Racehorses Starve as Charity Fails in Mission to Care for Them

Ex-Racehorses Starve as Charity Fails in Mission to Care for Them - NYTimes.com

This is sad in so many ways. I wish someone of the stature of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett would agree to fund this effort to keep these animals well fed till they die. This would be a pittance, sofa change in fact, to add to the huge philanthropic effort they already put forth.

India - is she ready for prime time?

I have been hearing a lot about India and how changed it is. I go back every year, and of course I see some progress. But is it progressing in the true sense? Or is she riding a wave of unsustainable growth?

India needs to dig deep and come up with high tech products. Not just high tech services. High tech services are transferable to other countries, especially when the hourly rates go up. Do we have a Samsung or a Hitachi? A Sony or a Panasonic? No, but what we have are programmers hives, like Infosys or TCS.

Sure they provide valuable service. But is that such a big deal? Not to me. India needs to invent! And invent big. Remember the stir a small car like Nano caused in the world market? And of course, the stir went away soon.

So instead of resting on the laurels of a service industry that basically saves money for foreign companies when they offload labor (and their valuable jobs) to India, whether that is call center operations or application development, India needs to come up with it's Apple. It's Intel, or it's Ford.

Go big. See the lowly Kia and Hyundai of yesteryears becoming a global player? Samsung? In other words, learn from Korea. Learning from Japan might be a bit too imposing of a demand for India right now, as Japan has been doing this for decades.

Now, while at it, lets start cleaning up. We need stricter laws, and honest cops who enforce those laws. We need to preserve our forests and rivers. Clean up Ganges - it's current label as the World's most polluted river is a dark stain to say the least. Include civic lessons in high schools. Clean cities, no stuck open drainages. Treat water before letting it into sea or rivers.

Democracy is wonderful, but sometimes a hard hand is required to force progress through, a la China. Build roads and rails, but with quality and without kickbacks. And take care of the abject poor.

There is a lot India has to do to be a world player. And it can be done, but not with the current business model of 'service'. Not in the long term. India has the brain power, and education to drive a high tech manufacturing industry. Lets head that way.

And we cannot ignore this elephant in the room: grinding poverty, in which we are number one.

Call centers and internet jobs are not for them. They need manufacturing. Small, large and some in between.

Republicans want what is good for the country?

Yeah, if the country is comprised of just the top 1% income earners only. Then they support them 100%. Now how do I know this?

Well, the good folks at The Christian Left has compiled some numbers and put it together in a nice image that should illustrate how Republicans do things. I was just talking to Mohamed, my friend who owns my local sandwich shop, about how for example Gov Walker (R) of Wisconsin, whose R might be a stand-in for both Republican or Recalled, created this budget deficit problem as soon as he took charge of the Badger State. There was none, mind you, in Dec 2010. So he comes in on Jan 2011, and gives away $130 million as unfunded tax breaks to corporations. Bam! There is your budget hole.

So what does he do next?

Asks the middle class to bear the burden - all Public Union workers got a nice pay cut, and he banished their half century old Collective Bargaining right. And that Wisconsin Kochsucker wiped some of that corporate shit that was on his nose as he got off his knee pads. Break the unions that leans Democratic while handing over huge chunks of money to the rich. Win-win for everyone, if by everyone, we mean the top 1%, as I said in the beginning.

So without further ado - here is how they do it. Thanks to The Christian Left.

Been a while. So I will just say something with a picture.

No words necessary.

Hitch - get better!

From Vanity Fair - by Hitchens. He is talking about Glenn Beck and his blathering idiotic followers here.

"But the Beck-Skousen faction want to make such a debate impossible. They need and want to sublimate the anxiety into hysteria and paranoia. The president is a Kenyan. The president is a secret Muslim. The president (why not?—after all, every little bit helps) is the unacknowledged love child of Malcolm X. And this is their response to the election of an extremely moderate half-African American candidate, who speaks better English than most and who has a model family. Revolted by this development, huge numbers of white people choose to demonstrate their independence and superiority by putting themselves eagerly at the disposal of a tear-stained semi-literate shock jock, and by repeating his list of lies and defamations. But, of course, there’s nothing racial in their attitude …"

Megyn Kelly on the Propaganda Channel..

Biased? Fox News? Hell no.. Watch this - and try to fathom the astonishing shallowness of this woman while she is trying to browbeat the CAIR (Islamic Relations in America something) person..

It is so illuminating how she gets all high and mighty when CAIR asks her the question whether she gets nervous when she sees Muslims in planes. Does not answer. I mean what can she say? She gets nervous? That would make her a bigot. Does not make her nervous? That would imply she's unlike the 'big majority of Americans' who thinks like Juan Williams. She gets all pissy and argues that Juan Williams' First Amendment was violated. No stupid blonde, it was not. Two things. He spoke freely. But he should be ready to accept the consequences from his employer who expects him to behave a certain way, as a journalist. This was but one of the many examples of him acting stupidly - but this one did break the camel's back.



Who names anyone Megyn anyways? MeGYN?!!

Hi - I am a teapartier! But I have no friggin clue what I am talking about.

Glenn Beck: Evolution Is 'Ridiculous -- I Haven't Seen A Half-Monkey, Half-Person Yet'

No mirrors in your mansion, Beck?

Think - what has Obama accomplished.

Take it away, Sully

Preventing a second Great Depression, which was a real possibility (and not just the jobless recovery we're in, but a full-scale collapse), rescuing the banks without nationalizing them, saving the auto-companies with precision and technocratic skill (I didn't think it would work at all, and it did), re-setting relations with the rest of the world, bringing a new sanity and balance to Middle East policy, taking out 400 al Qaeda operatives, using the myth of the surge to get the hell out of Iraq (for the most part), upping the ante to get a deal with the Taliban and enacting a centrist, moderate law that for the first time in history ensures that anyone can get health insurance in this country ... really, in perspective, pretty damn remarkable.

Politically, he had to deal with a GOP gone insane, and a propaganda machine of such virulence and relentlessness that you can see he is where he is. But although he is right that he lost the connection to us, his supporters, I don't think he could have kept up the hope and change inspiration indefinitely.

The View From My Window 2000 - 2010 - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

The View From My Window 2000 - 2010 - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Happy Tenth Anniversary, Andrew! Been a pleasure - right from the first couple years when I came in, read, and left, red in anger, at your complete faith in the reasoning behind the disastrous and traitorous Iraqi Invasion, to seeing your growing disappointment in the Bush era, your mea culpa regarding how wrong you were, and then on to your out and out support for candidate and then President Obama. And along the way peppered with many wonderful posts -I have lost count to how many I have re-blogged or emailed to friends and family.

You stayed true to a real conservative philosophy. Espousing the fact that the Govt should not be out there solving all the problems, but it should be more of a partnership. I agree. I do not like the Conservatives as they appear before me with their cheap populism - but I do like you.

So happy tenth!

No witch!

Nice! A parody of Christine 'I am not a witch' O'Donnell ad.

General Motors’ Wage-Cutting Deal Clears Way for Subcompact Car - NYTimes.com

General Motors’ Wage-Cutting Deal Clears Way for Subcompact Car - NYTimes.com

This is such a good piece of news! I am impressed with both GM and the UAW for making this happen. I am glad GM decided to do the right thing by doing the manufacturing here in the US, and for UAW for making the difficult decision of agreeing to the two-tier pay-scale system. A lot of the laid off workers at this plant is getting called back into service.

This is a fairly small step in the larger scale of Auto manufacturing, but a significant stepping stone for the resurgence of GM (of which I was sure of) and the re-emergence of Union jobs.

Orion Plant is also getting retooled to manufacture the Buick Verano (above). A beautiful car!

Kudos to all involved. I saw the Chevy Cruze last week at the dealership. A very fine car. Let's get that build & design quality into this new sub-compact as well.

Money quote from my blog in Dec 2008:

"And I am telling anyone who will listen that GM will be back, and back with a vengeance. They had turned the corner around 2 years back with their quality and design, and I for one am pulling for them. Hope they have an address book of all the workers they are planning on laying off, because the General is going to need them in a couple years."